I'd Rather Be Writing » screencasting

Appearing on The Forge Show from TechSmith Today at 2pm EST

Tom Johnson — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:41:00 +0000

I’m going to be on The Forge show today at 2pm EST. The Forge is a monthly web show put on by TechSmith, posted on their Visual Lounge blog. Here’s their description of The Forge:

New to The Forge? Wonder what it’s all about? It’s TechSmith’s monthly webshow where we talk about screencapture, screencasting, visual communication and more. We share our tips and tricks and chat with interesting guests about a variety of topics to help and inspire you. Sometimes we even have prizes. You never know what will happen on a live show. You can view the archives and past recordings here.

I was looking over the past archives this morning, and it looks like an incredible resource of content for screencasters and visual designers. I’m not actually in person in a studio or anything — just connecting virtually. And there are a number of other guests on the show, so my segment will only be 15 minutes. Still, if you’re around in the afternoon, check it out.

Oct 14 Update: Here’s the recording of the web show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzZO6M76OsE&t=1m41s

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Trying to Find a Theater Stage/Voice for an Impossible Situation

Tom Johnson — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:54:01 +0000

In a recent design review meeting, I showed some of my screencasts to our team for feedback. We also reviewed some screencasts created by voiceover talents in our audiovisual department and screencasts created by trainers. In listening to my voice in the screencasts, it’s clear that I still have a lot to learn. I’m not even close to the personal, conversational-sounding audio voice that I want to achieve. It sounds like I’m reading a script. It’s slow and dull.

My teammates recommended that I read a little faster, that I add more inflection and maybe even switch to an outline rather than read a script.

I agree, but it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to develop that personal voice. It’s not a technical problem to simply figure out. It’s a theater art, and I have no background in theater. (Okay, in 8th grade I had a one-line role in Oliver Twist.)

As I’ve been reading voiceover books on Google, clearly the consensus is that you need to implement some acting. You have to imagine a situation, what character you are, who the audience is, and the situation you’re in. This theatrical situation is exactly what a local voiceover coach said the very first day of a workshop I attended.

Voiceover pro James R. Alburger also emphasizes the role of acting in voiceovers:

Remember, voice acting is theater of the mind, and you are the actor. When you become the character in the copy, you will be believable to the audience, and a suspension of disbelief will be created. When the audience suspends their disbelief in what they hear, they become more open to the message. This all starts when you discover the character in the copy. (The art of voice acting: the craft and business of performing for voice-over)

Voiceover professional Bob Bergen gives similar advice:

“Acting, acting, acting!!! No matter what kind of VO [voiceover] work you are trying to break into, it’s all about the acting. . . . The obvious trait that animation voice actors have is the ability to change their voice to match characters . . . you have to be believable. There is no such thing as a good voice! Everyone has a good voice! If you listen to radio and TV you hear very real, non-announcer-y, guy/gal next door reads. It’s oh so much harder to be real than it is to be announcer-y!” (quoted in Voiceovers: Techniques and Tactics for Success, by Janet Wilcox)

In other words, good voiceover involves acting. The problem is that in commercial voiceovers, the situations are more story-driven. Sure, they could take place on a stage in a situation with characters. But in instructional writing, you’re saying mundane sentences like click this, select that. Do this to create a new widget, and then save it, etc. I’m practically falling asleep writing this sentence.

Inflect your instructional script with some interesting pitch and emotion, add some drama and soul to it, twist a word here and there, and you end up converting the instructional script into a ridiculous soap opera. Click this. Now SELECT this button …. and when you’re ALL finished, go ahead and save the information.

On what kind of stage could an instructional script like that take place? I’ve said in past posts that you can imagine yourself sitting in a cafe explaining to a friend how to use a software application. But somehow that isn’t enough. You’re still yourself, the user is too ordinary, and the setting is mundane.

But perhaps it isn’t. The real problem in this situation is that a click-this, select-that script WOULD NEVER BE AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION THAT YOU HAVE IN A CAFE WITH A FRIEND. Can you really imagine yourself sitting across from Jim, a technical novice, saying Now Jim, in order to create a new group on your dashboard [sip your Coca Cola], you first click the Settings menu, then select New, choose the Group type, add the people you want to the group [take a bit of a Cuban sandwich]. Configure the attributes of the group you want by selecting the check boxes. [Chew food.] Then click Save. [ Wipe corners of mouth with napkin.] Refresh your page and you will see the new group …

No. In a cafe, you would give a conceptual overview of the application, briefly describing the basic idea of a group and how it functions on the dashboard and within the larger purposes of the application.

Doc Guy explained this same idea in our review. He said,

When I choose to watch a video about software, I expect it to be a general overview, not full of specific steps to take to walk through an entire procedure. If I want the specific steps, I’ll go to the written help material.

During our discussion, I showed a sample video from my favorite screencaster, Michael Pick of WordPress.tv. Here’s his screencast on Carmen, the latest WordPress version released.

Don’t focus on the pace (which is much faster than my screencasts). Don’t listen to the Jazz music, which always add to the voice’s appeal. Instead, listen to the script itself: it’s general. It’s an overview. It’s conceptual. Specific, granular steps are not narrated in painstaking detail. It really is something you might hear a friend explaining in a cafe.

So perhaps I doom my own screencasting efforts by creating impractical scenarios and then kicking myself for my inability to make it sound conversational. I can’t simply single source my screencasting scripts with my procedural help topics. The real first step in creating an engaging script, I believe, is to be honest about exactly the type of dialogue that might take place on the stage of your cafe.

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Are You Irrelevant? Engaging, Provocative Video

Tom Johnson — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:18:22 +0000

I saw this video on the Content Wrangler Community. The original source is on youtube. Talk about engaging. I completely agree with the person here. In a day when I’m arguing for the merits of moving the Intercom online, this video couldn’t be any more apropo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUvd46_-iKE

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Screencasting Resources (Part One) « Blog « WordPress.tv

Tom Johnson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:43:01 +0000

Screencasting Resources (Part One) « Blog « WordPress.tv. Trying to learn more about screencasting? Check out this list of resources from Michael Pick, the screencasting master.

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Examples of Perfect Screencasts

Tom Johnson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:21:22 +0000

Michael Pick’s screencasts on WordPress.tv are, in my opinion, perfect screencasts. They’re the best I’ve seen — and I’m not just saying this because the video quality is crisp and the audio is rich. Pick blends filmography techniques with screencasting. Instead of the typical screencast that focuses almost entirely on the screen, with a disembodied voice narrating at length around a cursor’s boring movement, Pick fills his screencasts with eye candy and motion, moving from visual to visual as he narrates, giving you a conceptual understanding more than a detailed nitty-gritty how-to. His videos are dynamic and engaging. Like a good movie, you forget you’re watching a screencast and are entranced by the choreography and motion, the music and narration.

Here’s an example.

And another.

For more sample videos, see Michael Pick’s portfolio. I emailed Pick to find out more info about the toolset he uses to create the videos. He said,

It’s a bit of a grab bag: Screenflow (for capture), Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects and Ableton Live are the main apps I use, with occasional Cinema 4D. I think you can get away with using Screenflow (mac) or Camtasia (Windows) for the basics though – the rest are “trimmings.”

Some of these applications aren’t easy. I downloaded Adobe After Effects today. After about an hour I learned how to do a simple animation using keyframes. Final Cut Pro is a Mac application, as is Screenflow. Ableton Live is an advanced audio manipulation application, what perhaps an audio engineer at a recording house might use. I’m familiar with Camtasia Studio, but it’s limited when it comes to dynamic motion. Unless you’re recording your screen, you can’t make things move in the video. For example, if you have a visual diagram you’re using to explain a concept, you’re limited to a basic image. You can flip from one image to another, sure, but you can’t do what Pick is doing in his videos, with full-blow motion of non-screen objects. I’m hoping this kind of effect is possible in Adobe After Effects. Overall, I’ve come to the following conclusions about screencasts. Engaging screencasts have the following characteristics:

Brevity. Good screencasts are short — two minutes or less.
Eye candy. Good screencasts keep you visually entertained, moving from image to image fairly quickly.
Clarity. Good screencasts are visually clear and size well in your browser. The videos zoom in on the parts of the screen being explained. HD may be an option.
Rich audio. The audio is loud enough to listen to comfortably and has a rich, deep sound.
Background music. Good screencasts sometimes have cool background music that adds to the entertainment appeal.
Scripts. The narration isn’t off-the-cuff but is scripted. Even though it’s scripted, the narrator reads it in a dynamic, upbeat way.
Focus. The video focuses on a specific topic, rather than providing a 10 minute rambling tour of seventeen different features.
Title slide consistency. Good screencasts have consistent title slides that are visually attractive.

For more information on Michael Pick, see this interview by Blog Design Studio.

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HD Screencast Example

Tom Johnson — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:22:12 +0000

Embedding HD video screencasts into a WordPress blog is something I’ve been trying to figure out. The HD quality is key because it allows me to compress the file into a small space without the video looking fuzzy — a necessity for screencasts with small text. I also like the idea of showing video content directly where the reader is, rather than displaying the video in a popup or secondary window.

I learned that if you upgrade your space on a WordPress.com blog (not a self-hosted WordPress blog), you can then upload videos using the Add Video button. If you record in a 1280 x 720 px dimension, the uploaded video will be automatically rendered into HD format. You can then grab the embed code for the video and embed it on your self-hosted WordPress blog, changing the width to 640px and the height to 360px, which is what I’ve done below.

The following video explains a bit about the different files in a WordPress theme. I’m not so much trying to explain this concept as I am demonstrating the HD format for the screencast. Make sure you select the HD On option, since you can’t toggle back and forth from Off to On without restarting the video.

If you expand the view to full mode using the expand button in the lower-right corner, you can really see the difference between HD and non-HD. When it’s small, the difference isn’t that noticeable. Still, either mode is a lot clearer than other non-HD videos compressed to this size.

Youtube is also offering an HQ (for “high quality” — not quite the same as high definition) option for uploaded videos, so soon this may be a default feature with screencasts. The following is a youtube video that looks fuzzy if you don’t select the HQ option. If you expand the video to full size, though, it’s not as clear as my expanded WordPress video.

To overcome fuzziness problems, you usually have to use pan and zoom features to magnify content. This makes it more time-consuming to create the video. I realize, though, that the text in my sample HD screencast is pretty tiny and would benefit from some magnification.

What’s especially cool is that WordPress has made the HD transcoding engine available for use on your own server. The only catch is that it requires some advanced configuration on your part. Still, you could essentially create HD screencasts behind the firewall for your company.

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Embedding HD Quality Screencasts in Your Blog

Tom Johnson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:10:57 +0000

If you’ve ever uploaded a screencast into a video sharing site, such as Youtube, you’ll notice that the screen quality is poor. Screencasts require a high degree of clarity to be watchable. For example, here’s a screencast I uploaded to Youtube. It’s hard to see what’s going on.

Other video sharing sites have the same problem. Here’s the same video on Viddler.

And here’s the same video on Vimeo.

Unlike the other video sharing sites, Vimeo also provides an HD version. At first I was excited about Vimeo, because the HD version is pretty clear in the compressed form. To see what I’m talking about, watch this same video on Vimeo’s site.

Pretty clear, right?

Now, here’s the catch. To embed the HD version of the video on your own site, you have to upgrade to Vimeo Plus for $59.95 a year. Then you only get 5,000 embedded plays, which means only 5,000 people can watch the HD video embedded onto your site, or one user can watch it 5,000 times. You can buy more embedded plays for more money. For example, you can buy 100,000 embedded plays for $199, which isn’t that much. But still, the costs start to add up. This is already about $260 — each year.

And of course if you’re embedding HD video, you’ll need an HD camcorder, which is another $600 (for a low-end version).

Even if you go to all this trouble, the HD embedded screencasts you post on your blog might not be so viewable at a width of 550 pixels, which is about my blog’s post width. The text will be miniature, and users will want to expand it anyway. To make it viewable at this width, you’ll probably end up relying on the pan and zoom features in Camtasia Studio. As soon as you start adding in the pan and zooms and other post-production processing, creating that simple screencast jumped from about a 5 minute operation to an hour. After a few screencasts, you’ll tell yourself you don’t have time for screencasting.

There’s a much better way to create screencasts: Jing and Screencast.com.

Here’s a sample screencast embedded with Jing.

In the compressed form, the text is hard to see, similar to the other video players. However, if you click the expand button (see image below), the player expands to show perfect pixel clarity, unlike the other video services. It also darkens the background, giving you more of a movie-viewing experience.

Brooks Andrus, one of the Jing developers, created a tutorial on how to embed Jing videos into WordPress blogs. You have to change a few parameters in the default screencast.com embed code to make it play in WordPress, but it only takes 10 seconds to change this. (It’s a bug they’re fixing.)

With both Jing Pro and Camtasia Studio, you can also capture HD quality screencasts. Just record a dimension of at least 1280 x 720 pixels. If you increase that size, maintain the same 4:3 aspect ratio. Choose the MPEG4 output (only available in Jing Pro). In both Jing Pro and Camtasia, the video output will be encoded with the H.264 codec. If you were to upload such a video to Vimeo, or embed it with the Jing wrapper as I explained above, the video would appear in HD quality.

You don’t have to use Screencast.com with Jing. Brooks also shows you how to FTP the video to your own site and embed the screencast with the Kimili flash embed plugin. This solution is useful if you want to maintain tighter control over your content.

I’ve been experimenting with Vimeo and other video-sharing services for the past couple of days. Overall, I’m pretty sold on the Jing/Screencast.com solution (or the Jing wrapper solution), for the reasons I explained in this post (cost, clarity, screen real estate). Jing and Screencast.com are also in their development infancy, so who knows, they may be working on more HD features similar to Vimeo right now anyway.

Do you agree with my analysis of screencasting solutions ? Are you embedding screencasts a different way? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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Documentation Review Techniques (videocast)

Tom Johnson — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 05:57:29 +0000

I believe that in order to learn something, you have to do it, for the most part. So forgive me if my first dozen videocasts here are experimental, because I’m learning. I’m finding that video is a little trickier than I thought.

To create video, you first need some type of video camera (obviously). I have a Sony handycam camcorder that I bought in 2000 and never really used much — until now. It records on miniDV tapes rather than a hard drive, and I can only transfer captured video via a firewire cable to my computer. In 2000, we paid about $600 for the camcorder. Now I believe I could walk into any pawn shop and get the same camera for $60.

There is so much to video. What program to use, what format to publish it, the video service, getting video in iTunes, and so on. This is my video learning phase, so bear with me. Just last night, while exploring the little hidden compartments on the camcorder, I discovered the microphone port I’d been looking for. It accepts a 1/8th inch microphone jack. Unfortunately I discovered the microphone port after I recorded the video.

A little explanation about the videos. There are two videos, answering two reader’s questions. The first reader writes,

I’m getting ready to publish my Manuals and was wondering if you go through a process of review, a checklist before you publish your manuals. If you do, it’d be great if you could share it. I’m sure your other readers would greatly benefit from it.

Here’s my videocast response:

(iPod format)

Another reader asks a related question:

In my organization, we have a set of controlled documentation. Changes that need to be made are requested through an Engineering Change Notification application. As part of our process, we mark the requested changes in the document with red text and a black change bar along the left margin. We are reviewing our process, and are looking for better ways (if any) to mark changes in the document.

Here’s my videocast response:

(iPod format)

These videos are actually my second recording. I initially tried recording at about 6 p.m., which is prime family time in the Johnson household. I learned that trying to record while family is up and about is challenging. My oldest daughter made rabbit ears behind me, Jane made cookies and clanked dishes, my four-year-old grabbed the camera and drove a stroller around the kitchen. I started over a few times and finally made it through an entire recording, but there were too many distractions.

If you prefer to listen to these videocasts as a single MP3 file in your iPod instead, here’s an MP3 recording of much better quality.

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Length: 14 min.

If you have any comments about documentation review techniques or tips for creating videocasts, please leave your comments below.

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Screencasting — Workflow and Presentation, by Collin Turner (Podcast)

Tom Johnson — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:40:34 +0000

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Length: 65 min.

Screencasting Presentation Summary

In this podcast, Collin Turner presents on “Screencasting — Workflow and Presentation” to the Intermountain STC chapter in Utah. Here’s the presentation summary:

Screencasting (when applied properly) is a valuable tool whose popularity is gaining traction. Most available software is accessible and easy to use. You can make or break a screencast before you ever capture a single screen. This presentation covers the basics of screencasting from concept to publication. This is not a presentation on software … this is all about planning and workflow!
Collin breaks the process of creating screencasts into five accessible phases:

Concept

Pre-production

Production

Post-production

Publication/launch

View the accompanying Zoho presentation slides.

You can also see a presentation outline here.

About Collin Turner

Collin Turner is a technical communicator, sometimes author, editor and photographer usually found deep within the workings of APIs, writing manuals or managing projects. Screen casting is one of his latest focus points during a 15-year career in the field. You can find him online at www.collinturner.com.

Links

(See a flyer about the presentation here.)

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Podcast: Using Video in Training and Documentation, Interview with Todd O’Neill

Tom Johnson — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 03:52:56 +0000

Download MP3
Duration: 20 min.

In this podcast, rich media specialist Todd O’Neill explains how to add video to your training and documentation deliverables. Many technical writers are intimidated by the learning curve, equipment costs, and software they think they need to create video, but actually you can create engaging videos with minimal equipment (e.g., $150 for a Flip video camera) and using software you probably already have (e.g, Windows Movie Maker or iMovie).

In this podcast, Todd lays out the basics for those who know nothing about video. He explains the equipment you need, techniques for minimizing editing time, ways to publish the video online, filming techniques to focus on, and creative ways to package your video for your users.

For more information, see Todd O’Neill’s blog at http://doingmedia.net.

Note: I recorded this podcast at Doc Train 2008 in Vancouver, Canada.